Intel Centrino mobile technology

Personal Internet on the Large Screen
The next generation of Intel Centrino mobile technology, codenamed Santa Rosa and detailed for the first time in Maloney’s keynote, is designed to give users better overall performance and graphics, improved wireless connectivity and improved security and manageability. Santa Rosa is expected to include a more powerful mobile microprocessor, an improved graphics chipset, codenamed Crestline, an IEEE* 802.11n Wi–Fi adapter, codenamed Kedron, as well as Intel–optimized advanced management and security solutions. The platform will also include Intel’s NAND flash–based platform accelerator, codenamed Robson, which enables much more rapid boot–up time and power savings. Santa Rosa, available in the first half of 2007, will use Intel’s next–generation dual–core mobile microprocessor based on Intel’s Core™ microarchitecture, codenamed Merom, Intel’s new foundation for delivering even greater energy–efficient performance. An initial version of Merom will also be available for the current Intel Centrino Duo platform to align with the 2006 holiday buying cycle and will be socket or pin–compatible with the current version of Intel® Core™ Duo processors.

Maloney also showcased two new concept PCs from Intel that offer multiple operating modes to increase their usability. These devices provide innovative form factors, multiple ergonomic configurations, and innovative features that can spark new design ideas for OEMs. These concept PCs feature integrated WiMAX and wireless WAN technology, hard drive backup capability and broadcast digital TV reception capability.

**************************************************************************** Intel shares the details of Santa Rosa Author: Richard Swinburne Published: 17th April 2007

IDF SPRING 2007 Intel is very aware that mobile computing is the way forward and with a consistent double digit growth of the industry predicted until 2011 means it is a very lucrative market to get into.

Intel’s Israeli mobile guru, Mooly Eden, pointed out that whether it’s around the house or around the world, mobile phones are becoming a necessary personal item. The mobile phone caused a revolution in phone take up by creating an association between device and person.

Notebooks have the same personal association rather than being in a shared commodity. It allows a more personal and consistent computing experience rather than just being a limited time, fixed position household item.

Santa Rosa

If you've been living under a rock (or don't really follow mobile technology -- Ed), Santa Rosa is the code name for Intel’s next generation Centrino notebook standard. It features a Core 2 Duo with an 800MHz FSB (up from 667MHz) and now has 4MB L2 Cache. Whilst the first inception will be released with a standard Core 2 Duo, the refresh will come with an updated 45nm Penryn CPU that offers all the extra internal gubbins we recently wrote about.

Also included on the Santa Rosa platform is the now standard use of the Mobile Intel GM, PM and GL965 Express Chipsets, of which the integrated graphics core has been boosted to include candence detection, more advanced de-interlacing and colour control: really nothing we haven’t already seen before from the big graphics boys.

Finally there’s the inclusion of draft 802.11n Wi-Fi and the inclusion of Intel Turbo Memory, previously known as Robson, which offers caching technology performance increases as well as simultaneously saving around 0.4W of power. This may not seem much, but it's yet another cumulative power saving of the new platform that will increase battery life.

The new Centrino Pro platform includes Active Management Technology at the latest version of 2.5, which enables corporate IT networks to secure and wirelessly manage a laptop. So next time those half a million personal details records are lost or stolen, someone in the IT department can brick the notebook remotely.

Montevina

Looking beyond Santa Rosa, Montevina will feature the same Penryn processor but will use the next generation Cantiga chipset which will more than likely feature DDR3 and a DirectX 10 integrated graphics core. It won’t just have Wi-Fi but will also potentially have WiMAX as well, assuming it takes off at all.

Future LAN is labelled Boaz, and whilst there is no indication of the increased speeds yet, it is set to improve on security and management for future iterations of the business orientated Centrino Pro range. Finally, Robson will be updated to version 2.0, which by then will use far faster, larger and possibly specifically designed NAND flash modules.

For a far more in-depth look at Santa Rosa, check out an entire 8-page article dedicated to it at Trusted Reviews.